Britons munching snacks at the back of the temple －お寺の後ろの方で、おやつをむしゃむしゃ食べるイギリス人－

If you were invited to bring your own food to a philosophical discussion with priests at a local temple, what kind of food would you bring with you?

How about a cold McDonald’s “Happy meal” bought the night before?  Or two packets of crisps and a crisp sandwich?  A crisp sandwich is, in case you have never tried one, a layer of crisps sandwiched in between two pieces of bread.

Now I don’t have any particular religion myself.  But I would like to respect the temple by not bringing junk food inside.  Can you imagine having a conversation like this with the priest?  “Do you believe that modern materialism is incompatible with a virtuous life?  Oh, Father – How rude of me.  Would you like a bite of my Big Mac?  Or a slurp of my Coke?”

It might be better to opt for a tofu salad, or a lentil curry, or anything more wholesome than a crisp sandwich.

People say that you should treat your body as a temple.  You should be very careful about what you bring inside it.  Shouldn’t this be even more true of your children’s bodies?  Since they are too young to make their own lifestyle choices, isn’t it important for their parents to lead them down a wholesome path?

I read an article this week about a head teacher at a school in the UK who complained about the packed lunches parents were giving to their children to eat at the school.  Some of the worst lunches provided by parents were a McDonald’s Happy meal (cold, bought the night before), and two packets of crisps and a crisp sandwich.  If this had happened in a very poor part of the country, it would be more understandable.  The parents might have other major problems, or be poorly educated themselves.  But this happened in a relatively well off part of England.

In the same week, I read an article about the salt content of many snack foods in the UK.  The government has introduced a voluntary scheme to encourage food manufacturers to lower the amount of salt they use in their snacks.  But how effective is a voluntary scheme really likely to be?  For instance, a scientific study found that one chocolate drink contained 16 times the government’s recommended maximum amount of salt.  The hot chocolate with marshmallows was saltier than seawater.

The problem is that British people like to indulge themselves.  “Go on then.  Just the one.  After all, I’ve worked hard today.  Okay, just one more.”

Maybe I can’t complain.  I brought a Mister Donut’s doughnut into my temple today, and am about to treat my cold with a Scotch whisky cure.  Go on.  Just the one.  After all, you’ve been sick.  You deserve it.  Just one more.  I’m British after all. 

 

Vocabulary:

to munch – to chew or eat, especially whilst making a noise

crisps – a thinly cut, fried and salted or flavoured snack; potato chips (American English)

incompatible – of two things, so different that they cannot exist together

virtuous – good or morally correct

a slurp – a large sucking sound made when drinking or eating; the action of sucking something into your mouth

wholesome – good for you; clean and healthy

a packed lunch – a prepared lunch, packed into a container such as a tub

well off - rich

to indulge oneself – to allow oneself to enjoy the pleasure of something 

An alien encounter in Saitama －埼玉で宇宙人に遭遇－

Have you heard about the strange incident which happened recently in a remote location in Saitama? 

Someone saw a really weird creature just standing there in a field and staring at them.  This creature was huge.  It was perhaps 50 times bigger than the person who saw it.  It seemed to have a face a bit like a human’s, with eyes and ears.  But it was a horrible face, long and stretched, and it moved its mouth round and round in some odd pattern, dribbling and drooling green liquid.  The huge creature had four legs.  And it had an absolutely horrible smell.  You could smell the thing long before you got close.

If you had suddenly come across this weird creature in Saitama, how would you have reacted?  You probably would have screamed, and been terrified for the rest of the day.

That’s exactly what happened to my seven month old son when we took him to a dairy farm in Saitama.  He had never seen any animals in his whole life up until that point.  Then he smelled, and saw, a big dairy cow chewing grass and staring at him.  Of course, compared to a baby, a cow is very big.  My son wouldn’t stop crying and, as we led him away, he kept turning to look back and see if the horrible creature was still there.

I wonder what he thought it was?  If he had no idea that animals other than humans existed, did he see it as a really ugly human?  Was he worried that we were going to pass him over for the cow to cuddle and kiss?

Or did he react like we would upon seeing an alien – meeting something totally outside his experience and expectation and trying desperately to figure out if it was going to attack him?

The next time we introduce an alien creature to our son, we’ll start with a hamster and work our way up from there.

 

Vocabulary:

a remote location – a distant or hard to reach place

to dribble – for liquid to fall in slow drops or a trickle; to allow saliva to drop from one’s mouth

to drool – to allow saliva to drop uncontrollably from one’s mouth

dairy – milk or milk products

 

mr partner versus mr William

I was recently asked to do an interview for a Japanese magazine.  You can read the interview in the current issue of “mr partner”.  It is available in major bookstores in Japan, such as Junkudo in Ikebukero.  It is a magazine about the UK, written in Japanese.

I am not sure why the magazine is called “mr partner”.  I hope that they don’t mind me saying so, but the name sounds a bit more like a dating magazine than a magazine about the UK.  When they asked me to talk about myself, and also to provide some photos, I wondered if I would get some proposals of marriage in reply!  Sadly none have arrived so far.

They asked me to recommend a place in the UK to visit, and I recommended Orkney.  The Orkney Islands are off the north coast of Scotland.  One of the great places to visit there is Skara Brae, a Stone Age settlement.  They also have two whiskey distilleries – Highland Park and Scapa.  And there is a magnificent diving site where you can see the wrecks of many ships from the German First World War navy.  And my mum comes from Orkney.  So it must be nice.

Perhaps there is a dating magazine with a similarly odd name.  Has anyone seen a magazine called “Shakespeare’s country” or “The A to Z of Britain”, in which there is nothing but pictures of handsome British men looking for Japanese wives, or cute British girls looking for Japanese husbands?  If so, they can swap names with mr partner.

In the meantime, take a look at mr partner to read the rest of the interview.  And note that marriage proposals are not being considered at this time!
 

Vocabulary:

a proposal – a plan or suggestion; an invitation to marry

a settlement – a group of houses or places where people live

a distillery – a place where whiskey is made

a wreck – the remains of a ship after it has been severely damaged or sunk

odd - strange

Come into my pyramid and listen to my treasures －我が宝物を聴きに、我がピラミッドにお入りなさい－

 “Collecting is a strange affliction.  I have to admit to being a sufferer since childhood.”
Sir David Attenborough

Hello.  My name’s Will and I’m a music collector.

If my wife or my baby don’t pull me away from my computer, I can spend hours on end polishing my collection: renaming files that are slightly wrong, moving files from one section to another, deleting files that no longer seem to fit, etc.  And nothing makes me happier than hunting for the next great song to add to the collection, and finding a track that makes me think, “How have I lived all this time without you?”

Am I obsessed?  Should I be embarrassed to be a grown man and to expend so much thought and energy on building and maintaining a little pyramid of songs?  Like an alcoholic giving up alcohol, should I try to quit the collecting habit completely?

The reason I have been thinking about giving up my music files is Spotify.  The web site has recently launched in Japan.  For those who don’t know, it’s a service which allows you to listen to music on line.  They have a huge collection of millions of songs to choose from, including many rarities that I’ve wanted to find for years.  Suddenly I have access to them all with a few clicks.  And if I don’t mind occasional adverts, I don’t even have to pay money to listen.

How can my carefully polished and crafted little pyramid of songs compete with the millions and millions of Spotify?  My little collection is like an ant hill standing before the Great Pyramid at Giza.

I don’t collect old vinyl records or even cds.  It’s really just the music itself, kept as files on my computer.  So it isn’t taking up much space.  I could keep both the ant hill and also have access to the Great Pyramid of Spotify.  The only reason to get rid of the whole of my collection would be an occasional sense of embarrassment, of wasted time over a solitary obsession.  So is it really so embarrassing?

I remember listening to Sir David Attenborough talking about the subject of collecting in some radio lectures which were broadcast on the BBC.  He is a famous British nature documentary filmmaker.  He admitted to collecting many things over his life: stamps, fossils, bus tickets and books about New Guinea.  With some embarrassment he said that even as an elderly man, he collected obsessively.  He couldn’t stop himself from buying books about New Guinea, even if he found them boring.

He also went on to talk about why some men like him became obsessive collectors.  He claimed that while some women collect, it is overwhelmingly a male phenomenon.  And he pointed out that in early human history men had the task of hunting for meat to bring back to the family or tribe.  And he felt that deep inside men, there is still a desire to hunt – to spend time searching for something treasured and to bring it back.  And he felt that modern life gave few opportunities to satisfy this desire directly, so we satisfy it indirectly with our collections.

So I’m not alone.  Perhaps most of the men who read the opening lines of today’s blog thought, “Yeah, so what?  I’m a music collector too.”  If collecting is so important to the male mind, then if I give up collecting songs, I’ll start collecting stamps or train numbers instead.  It could be worse.

Have you heard the song “Ghosts” by the folk band Lau?  It’s in my “Celtic folk” section.  Come and have a listen... 

 

Vocabulary:

an affliction – an illness; something which negatively affects you and you have to bear

hours on end – hour after hour; a great many hours

to be obsessed – to be so focussed on something that you cannot stop thinking about it

a rarity – something which is rare or very uncommon

solitary – done or existing alone

a fossil – the ancient remains of the bones of animals found in rocks

a phenomenon – an observed fact; something which is seen to happen

 

 

What is William’s Premium English service? －ウィリアム先生の高級英語サービスって、どんなものなんですか？－

Well, have you all recovered from last Friday?  I suppose you all went a little bit crazy that night.  It is only to be expected.  After leaving work early at 3pm, I imagine that you went shopping at a luxury department store, then gourmet dining at a fancy sushi restaurant, and spent a whole load of money?

I am of course talking about Premium Friday.  It is the latest initiative from the Japanese government, which is designed to kill two birds with one stone.  Japanese companies were encouraged to let their overworked employees leave work at 3pm that day, giving them a much needed rest.  And the workers were encouraged to use the time off to help the Japanese economy by going on a spending spree.

Unfortunately, I haven’t talked to a single Japanese person who got off work early on the first Premium Friday.  The initiative will be repeated on the last Friday of every month so we will have to wait and see if the idea catches on.  But like many clever government initiatives, it will probably only be a few civil servants who get the benefit.  Those government workers have got to set a good example to everyone else by leaving early, don’t they?

Well, even if it doesn’t catch on, I like the idea of Premium Friday.  It got me thinking about my own business.  I teach English, of course, at Nerima English (very reasonable prices, Skype lessons also available!)  How can I differentiate my school from other English schools?  What if I was to start a Premium English service?  On the last Friday of each month, I could charge ten times the normal price.  All of the loyal civil servants have to go out and spend money to stimulate the economy.  Why not spend crazy money on English lessons?

But to justify charging ten times the normal price, I have to come up with a gimmick – something to explain the price increase.

I heard about a dentist in Tokyo who charges much more than other dentists.  To justify his premium service, he dresses like an old fashioned British butler.  And instead of having his patients lie back on a dentists’ chair, he has them sit on his lap while he works on their teeth.  Apparently, he is very popular with mature ladies.

Could I steal his idea?  On the last Friday of every month, could I dress in a tuxedo and teach the students English while they sit on my lap?  Hmmm, it’s tempting, but I’m worried that I might attract the wrong sort of student.

I normally offer my students a cup of tea to sip while we go through the lesson.  Could I change it to Champagne?  But they would expect me to drink along with them and I get drunk very easily on Champagne.  After the second lesson I would be drunk, and I might get complaints about the quality of my lessons.

So how about this – on the last Friday in every month, I give English lessons in complete darkness?  I turn off all of the lights and close the shutters to shut out any light from the street.  The students have to feel their way along the walls to get to the sofa, following my directions.  I can say that it is special training for the ears.  Too many students get lazy and rely on gestures and facial expressions to get through the lessons!  With William’s Premium English you can rest those tired eyes and give your ears the special attention they deserve.  And all for only 20,000 yen a lesson!  And if you are an exhausted civil servant, the wonderfully understanding teacher won’t mind if you fall asleep.  He’ll happily keep whispering English phrases to you for 50 minutes in the dark.

That’s it.  I’m a millionaire! 

 

Vocabulary:

to go crazy – as a slang phrase, to act in a way which seems mad

fancy – of a shop, cake etc., high-class or expensive-looking

to get off work – to be allowed to leave or not to go to work

an initiative – a policy or plan for change

a spending spree – a period when one spends a lot of money in a short time

to catch on – to become popular

a civil servant – an employee of the government; someone who works for the state

to differentiate – to show the differences or unique points of

a gimmick – a trick to attract business, publicity etc.

a butler – the head servant of a house

one’s lap – when one is sitting down, the thighs or upper legs

 

one of William’s Premium English lessons